Heretofore, players using electronic games customarily establish game credit by inserting one or more coins, thereby enabling the game to be operated until credit has been exhausted. With such games, it is necessary for players to have a ready supply of coins in order to continue playing the game. Sometimes an establishment may provide a coin changer on location so that players may exchange their paper currency for coins. Some games may even include bill changers or accept paper currency in addition to coins.
No matter which of the above methods is implemented, the same problems still exist; currency may be accumulated in the games which is not readily accessible either to the location or other vendor owner of the machines. The location must wait for the game cash boxes to be emptied before there can be access to the currency. The delay and removal results in added cost and inconvenience. Furthermore, customers typically acquire change from the establishment, thus reducing the location's available currency even more.
Billing for usage of electronic games is also an expensive and time consuming process. Many locations do not own the electronic games that are located in their establishment. Locations may lease electronic games from the owners, i.e., vendors, of the games and share the profits received from the electronic games with the vendors.
Such a leasing arrangement typically requires a manual accounting process. Routemen employed by the vendor game owners travel to each electronic game location to check the number of times a game has been played. The number of times a game has been played is usually determined by counting the money located in the game, or by reading an electronic or mechanical counter located within the electronic game. This accounting process is generally very costly and time consuming.
It is known to connect machines in an installation to a central computer system which can interrogate each machine in the system to gather audit data collected by the machines during their normal course of operation. This audit data includes data relating to the number of times the machine has been played. Such a system enables a vendor game owner to verify readings reported by routemen, thus providing added security to the manual accounting process.
It is also common in some countries to operate machine systems wherein the player does not insert coins or tokens into the machine being played, but instead pays at a cashier on location. The cashier on receiving the appropriate payment then credits the machine either remotely by transmitting electrical pulses to the machine or by some other alternative way such as use of tokens exchanged for coins and other currency. Such systems avoid having to either empty the game cash boxes or taking coins out of circulation.